


hard to control when it begins

by notbang



Category: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (TV)
Genre: Discussions of Heather/Greg, F/M, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:54:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27350791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notbang/pseuds/notbang
Summary: “Dude, why have you still got a bee in your bonnet over this? It doesn’t even affect you in like, any way.”“Because you’re supposed to be Switzerland,” he blurts out, as if it’s obvious.“Okay,” Heather says, then tilts her head. “What?”“You’re supposed to be Switzerland, but instead, I find out you’re actually an expatriate of Italy.”Post-open mic, everyone heads back to Rebecca's house, and Nathaniel never quite makes it past the patio.
Relationships: Heather Davis & Nathaniel Plimpton, Rebecca Bunch/Nathaniel Plimpton
Comments: 5
Kudos: 31





	hard to control when it begins

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cori_the_bloody](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cori_the_bloody/gifts).



> I had every intention of finishing this as a birthday gift, but that never quite came about. Happy belated birthday, Cori!

Nathaniel’s not entirely sure why he agreed to come here.

A beer had been thrust into his hand on arrival, and in his awkwardness he’d never really made it past lingering on the patio, pretending to study the arrangement of Rebecca’s houseplants as he picked absently at the label on his bottle with the blunt of his thumbnail. 

A version of him from another life never made a habit of putting himself in situations where he wasn’t in his element, holding at least most of all the cards, but if he wracks his brain for an exception, of course it brings him back to being here, in this very house, awkwardly trying to assert himself into a position attracting the attention of its host. He’d at least felt in some version of control at Rebecca’s rehearsal dinner, but looking back, his steady unravelling into unhinged had already been well underway.

Now, he just feels like he’s forgotten how to be around people.

Not that there weren’t people in Guatemala—he’d spent plenty of nights socialising with the locals, sampling beers, picking adventurously at home cooked delicacies and putting his Spanish to use in a way that would have made Esteban proud. But Guatemala had been like its own pocket universe; a place where nobody knew what had come before and he could refashion himself anew. Being back in West Covina is different, where he can feel the pieces of his past self carved into into the walls of buildings and etched into the creases of faces scrunching in recollection of the person he used to be. He’s not _Natanael_ here, but he’s not old Nathaniel, either, and he finds himself wildly unmoored, grasping blindly between the two.

He startles when Heather drops unceremoniously down onto the lounger beside him, barely sparing him a greeting glance before sliding her hand behind him on the seat, making him squirm.

“Um,” is all he manages, back arching away from her wandering fingers.

When she pulls back she’s holding a lighter and a dime bag, which she tilts up towards the light in order to inspect the single rolled joint inside.

He’d seen Heather at the open mic, of course, and had even been the lucky recipient of an amicable punch to the arm upon accidentally catching her eye. But then Valencia had breezed in, fiancee in tow and brandishing a platinum ring that had quickly commandeered the attention of Heather and Paula, leaving him to exchange pleasantries with his once-upon-a-time employees before relegating himself to a table to nurse his discomfort with a scotch on the rocks. 

It had been White Josh that had clued him in on the impromptu afterparty back at Rebecca’s once the impatient host had shooed the lot of them out, his old gym buddy sidling up beside Nathaniel to grasp his palm in a firm handshake as he settled his bill, while Rebecca and her lady posse spilled out onto the street in a whirl of chatter and laughter.

“Approximately how long has that been there?” he asks once it becomes apparent Heather isn’t planning on saying anything.

“Well over a year, for sure,” Heather says. “Maybe closer to two. So it’s probably stale, right?”

“More than likely, yes.”

“Hmm. I’d be doing it a disservice not to check, though, right?”

“If you say so.”

“Guess I do say so.” She flicks the wheel on the lighter a couple of times but to no avail. “Hey. Got a light?”

He hums, mouth twisting upwards, sardonic. “Do I _look_ like the kind of person that’s ‘got a light’, to you?”

She makes unimpressed, unwavering eye contact with him for an uncomfortably long moment before whipping her head around to survey the closest guests for likelihood of suitability to her needs. 

“I’ll be back,” she tells him, tossing the ziplock into his lap.

He frowns, and hides it beneath his legs until she comes back with a gas torch he presumes she’s swiped from Rebecca’s kitchen.

There’s an explosion of raucous laughter from the living room, drawing his attention, and by the time he drags his gaze back to Heather she’s already clicking off the torch and taking a tentative drag from the lit joint.

“Yeah, that’s… not great,” she coughs, batting the smoke away and nearly taking his eye out in the process. “Damn. Want to try?”

“After that rousing review?” he scoffs. “Thanks—think I’ll pass.”

“Suit yourself.”

Heather takes a final, disappointed puff as if to make sure before dragging the joint along the pavers and extinguishing it in favour of resuming her beer. She still doesn’t make an attempt at conversation, and Nathaniel shifts in his seat beside her, restless beneath the silence as it presses in on him.

“Is there a reason you’ve resorted to smoking two year old weed?” he eventually feels compelled to ask.

“Because it’s my two year old weed,” she says, shrugging, “and I saw you sitting out here like some kind of embarrassing loner and thought I’d come talk to you before Maya realised you were out here and beat me to it.”

He pulls a face that’s caught somewhere between a grimace at the possibility and gratitude that she engineered the situation otherwise. 

“It feels… strange, being back here,” he offers, feeling obligated, for some reason, to explain his antisocial behaviour. “A lot of memories.”

“Gross,” Heather says, nose scrunching. “I don’t need to retroactively know how many surfaces in my house you two bumped uglies on.”

“None, actually. The only time I ever spent the night here was when Rebecca was missing.”

She makes a quiet noise of surprise and finally reorients herself so that she’s actually facing him, legs pulled up and folded onto the couch in front of her. “In that case, I totally get what you mean. I used to live here, but now I don’t? So it kind of feels like this is my house, even though it hasn’t been for awhile.”

“Even if you still keep your weed here.”

She snorts. “Yeah.”

There’s another burst of laughter from inside the house, and Nathaniel’s gaze can’t help but snap to the unmistakable source—Rebecca in her bright red dress, bent nearly in half from the force of her cackle, arm swung wide to smack Greg playfully in the stomach. Greg holds a half-empty water bottle in one hand and he catches Rebecca’s offending wrist in the other, and that’s about the extent of the interaction Nathaniel can bear without feeling like some kind of creepy voyeur, swallowing down the sudden thickness in his throat as he squeezes his eyes shut for a second and pulls them away.

He’s apparently not as subtle about it as he would have liked, because Heather’s mouth sucks a little before she says, “There’s not, like, anything going on between them. If that’s what you’re wondering.”

“I’m not,” he says quickly.

She hums, skeptical. “Okay, well. First of all—sure, Jan. Second of all—you’ve been gone a long time, dude. I’m just catching you up.”

“I think half the town is probably caught up, after tonight,” he says wryly. 

“Yeah. Then there’s that.” She rolls the neck of her glass bottle back and forth between her fingertips, and the motion is oddly mesmerising. “I’m just saying, it’s not like they’ve been counting down the days to jump into bed together. And as one of Rebecca’s best friends _and_ the best Greg’s ever had, I feel uniquely qualified to—”

The beer explodes out of Nathaniel’s mouth and nose of its own volition.

“Ugh. Dude. _Gross_ ,” Heather complains, engaging in a total tongue-out cringe as she wipes the residue of his spit take off her face. 

“Sorry,” he wheezes around the burn of the alcohol lingering in his nostrils. “It’s just that I thought you just implied that you and Greg—”

“Dated? Yeah, I did. Didn’t think that constituted a free shower, though, so—thanks for that.”

Nathaniel feels a hot, sudden prickle along the back of his neck and a pressure on his sternum that he can’t explain. If Heather’s intention was distracting him from thinking about Rebecca, he’s fallen for it, hook, line and inexplicable sinker, unable to get the incongruous image of Heather and _Greg_ , of all people, out of his head.

“Right,” Heather says, pulling her lips tight and nodding. “Rebecca mentioned one time that you might be weird about this.”

Her assertion has him scoffing as he readjusts his posture into what he hopes resembles nonchalance. “I am not being _weird_ about anything. I’m being the opposite of weird, in fact.”

“Uh-huh. Which is?”

“Normal, obviously!”

“Mm-hmm. Alright, my bad.”

It takes a moment to realise that he’s frowning, only really registering when the muscles in his forehead start to ache. Even still, he finds himself unable to relax the furrow in his brow, trying instead to smother the scowl by taking a long swig from his beer.

Heather sighs, loud and dramatic, before flopping back into the couch cushions. “I _guess_ you’re gonna force me to fail the Bechdel test and recount my romantic failures in order to make you feel marginally better about your own.”

“The what now?”

“Oh, the Bechdel test? It’s a measure of whether or not a conversation between women revolves solely around men.”

He tilts his head, blinking his incomprehension. “But I'm a man.”

“Exactly," Heather says slowly, as if he’s the dumbest person she’s ever met. “The bar is set so low and yet it’s already an automatic fail. Do you want to know all the sordid details, or not?”

He’s definitely moved past the pervasive impulse to play off any interest in anyone else’s life but his own, but the well worn ridge of his biting back and forth with Heather is all too easy to fall back into.

“Not particularly, no.”

“Okay, well, the beer stains on my favourite blazer say otherwise.”

He sighs and scrapes his fingertips across his forehead with resignation. “Fine. Lay it on me.”

Heather sinks back further, endless arms spanning the headrest of the couch as she kicks up her feet on the cushion between them, her toes in serious danger of making unwelcome contact with his thigh, should he dare to draw breath. The deja vu crashes into him head-on; dragging him back to his cramped conveyance to the beach in her thankfully since-retired, rust-bucket excuse for a vehicle, during which he’d become far more closely acquainted with those toes—and the person they were attached to—than he’d initially bargained for. 

Ostensibly comfortable, having now somehow expanded to take up the entirety of the empty space, Heather begins, “So. I guess this story starts with me running into Greg in the strip mall where I was working, and inviting myself to his mom’s house for Christmas dinner.”

“Presumptuous.”

“Or… was it resourceful?”

“Those things are not necessarily mutually exclusive.”

“Fair.” 

Her toes flex and dig into the upholstery beside him. That day in the car they’d been painted an appropriately offensive yellow, but tonight they’re painted a similar shade of purple to the highlights in her hair. Nathaniel presses closer to the armrest and focuses on the large chip in the polish of her big toe that’s the shape of a lopsided love heart, as if the encroaching digits are a wild animal he’s unwilling to let out of his line of sight.

“This may be hard for you to believe, but I haven’t always had my life, like, together,” Heather goes on to pontificate, drawing a snort from him in response.

“I think I can manage to suspend my disbelief.”

“See, I know you’re thinking about my car—may she rest in peace—but honestly, that’s probably pretty representative of where I was at personally when I dated Greg. I’m talking pre-curl journey, when I never brushed my hair, even when it was wet, because I didn’t own a comb. Those are the circumstances that allowed this whole thing to happen: minor disaster old me dating the _astronomical_ disaster that was old Greg.” She widens her eyes at him to emphasise the point, then interlaces her fingers with a jabbing motion. “There’s a reason him and Rebecca were drawn to each other. But I was young and impressionable and kind of into that whole emotionally unavailable, brooding thing, and the guy I was seeing before him used to steal money for oxy out of my purse, so. The bar was low, but he was kind of an improvement.”

Nathaniel barks a laugh into his beer and feigns impressed. “Wow. Just one upgrade after another with you, isn’t it?”

“I want to be clear that I’m not telling you this to inflate your ego. Just because your baggage is designer, doesn’t mean you didn’t come with, like, oodles and oodles of it.”

It’s a recent development, but Nathaniel’s long past being oblivious to what appeal Rebecca could possibly see in his competitors. The three dates scenario, misguided as it had been, had made it clear that the playing field was far more even than he ever could have originally anticipated, and if his whole sordid romantic history with Rebecca has been good for anything, it was quickly knocking him down a peg or two in his confidence that he was some kind of perfect a catch.

“Why _are_ you telling me this, exactly? We might not know each other that well, but from what I’ve seen, you’re more about opinions than personal details. Given the people I’ve had to share office space with, it’s something I’ve always found begrudgingly refreshing about you.”

The tip of Heather’s nose scrunches back, as if he’s said something embarrassingly sappy, which he supposes he might as well have. 

“I’m telling you because for some reason the idea of me hooking up with Greg eight hundred years ago just completely blew your fucking mind, you wacko.”

Canting his eyebrows up his forehead to concede the point, he makes a _carry on, then_ motion with his hands. 

“Anyway, the gist of the story is that even though I was way too cool for him, I was super into Greg, and Greg was super into… someone else.”

That’s the part he’s unfortunately all too familiar with, of course. “This was while you and Rebecca lived together?”

“Oh, not at the time. At the time we were just next door neighbours. But that was probably, like, just as convenient for him in terms of travel time, and only marginally less shady in terms of, like, consideration of my feelings.”

She delivers the explanation so matter-of-factly—even for Heather—that he finds himself narrowing his eyes in search of microscopic clues that might reveal any actual emotional investment in the topic.

“What?” she asks, straightening with a frown. “I’m over it. Doesn’t mean I don’t have some opinions on the tactless way it went down.”

“I didn’t have you pegged as someone overly concerned with tact.”

“You’re right. I’m not. But there’s a difference between me telling you something you’re long overdue to hear and my young impressionable self getting stomped on by two people she kind of cared about. Unlike half the people in this town, I actually have some self respect.”

He makes a show of bristling at that, but doesn’t bother trying to contest it. “So you broke up with him, then. Because he was seeing Rebecca behind your back.”

“Mm, not exactly. But there’s just this… face that you guys make when you look at her, you know? It’s kind of gross. And I refused to sign up to resigning myself to looking at that face.”

He can’t help it—his eyes shoot straight to the window, where he can just make out the brilliant red of Rebecca’s dress from where she’s perched on the arm of her couch, gesticulating wildly with a spring roll in one hand as she says something to Paula. Greg—though the detail is of no interest to him, personally—is no longer anywhere to be seen.

“There is no _face_ ,” he argues on some kind of unavoidable autopilot.

“Well, wrong—because you’re making it right now. Ugh, it’s like I’m in a Jane Austen book or something. Rein in the yearning, dude—your sad little heart eyes are harshing my vibe.”

Unruffled, and annoyed at himself for how easily he’s apparently reverted to the unbearable sap he was before he left, he turns his attention pointedly back to the unwelcome proximity of her feet. “I refuse to accept social criticism from somebody seemingly incapable of wearing shoes.”

“Oh my god, shut up,” she says, straightening her legs so that the dry, flaky skin of her heels butt up against the flat of his thighs, making him cringe. “Didn’t living in the literal jungle for a year teach you to unclench, like, at all?”

He shoves her feet away before she can place them in his lap entirely, but she manages to get a well-timed kick in anyway. 

“Just go talk to her. You obviously want to, or you wouldn’t be here.”

“I actually came to see Josh,” he says, nodding in the direction of the kitchen, where he last spied Whijo and his beau.

“Great, then go talk to him. Go talk to literally anybody that isn’t here, on this couch. Are you a vampire? Are you waiting for an explicit invitation?”

Indignation flares up in him inexplicably at her prodding, licking through his veins until the prickly heat of it percolates on the tip of his tongue. “Haven’t seen Greg in awhile. Maybe you should go check on him, while I’m at it.” He knows even as he’s saying it that it’s not a particularly well-crafted insult, and that it’s more of a dig at himself, than anything, but he pushes through with it regardless. Commitment to the bit, and all that. “You know, since you two have all that history.”

Heather lets out a long, exaggerated groan. “Dude, why have you _still_ got a bee in your bonnet over this? It doesn’t even affect you in like, any way.”

“Because you’re supposed to be Switzerland,” he blurts out, as if it’s obvious.

“Okay,” Heather says, then tilts her head. “What?”

“You’re supposed to be Switzerland, but instead, I find out you’re actually an expatriate of Italy.”

“I have literally no idea what you’re saying but if you’re trying to make me choose between chocolate and pasta that just sounds like a scenario where nobody wins, so.”

Nathaniel makes a frustrated noise in the back of his throat and glares into his drink in response.

It’s not that he and Heather are particularly close; they’re not. But they’re also unfathomably, frustratingly connected—now even more so than he realised, to his great disgust—in ways that never seemed to be a problem for him in his life pre-West Covina.

“It’s just… we have a thing, you and I, right? I came to your wedding; you were inadvertently covered with the ashes of my dead Austrian au pair. I met Greg at the gym and thought he was just some guy I could lift weights with, but then I find out he and Rebecca used to date and suddenly we’re like the two main romantic rivals in a rom com, and Chan also happens to be there. Now you’re going to tell me you took plot-significant beach trips with him, too, probably.”

“Well…” she says, dragging out the word, “that’s a story for another time, for sure. Look, dude. This is a weird, incestuous town. People are going to know other people.” She eyes him, mouth scrunched with something like sympathy before caving and adopting a condescending coo. “Aw, but now I understand your convoluted metaphor. It’s baby’s first friend jealousy.”

“What?” it’s Nathaniel’s turn to ask, eyelids fluttering in impatient irritation as he bites off the end of the word.

“Oh, you’re jealous of my romantic history with Greg,” she enunciates slowly and loudly, “because you imprinted on me mid-meltdown and now you can’t stand the idea of my loyalties more firmly lying with my ex-lover with whom you view yourself in competition with. It’s, like, psychology 102.”

“Are we friends, though?”

“No, you’re right—people get this worked up over people they just consider mild acquaintances all the time.”

He huffs and makes a rude noise with his lips. “I’m _not—_ ”

“—worked up, either. I know. FYI, your ears are getting kind of pink, but I guess we can blame it on the beer if you want.”

“Maybe I’m unsettled by you dating Greg because I thought you had the potential to be the voice of reason, only to discover that you have terrible taste.”

“Mm, no. It’s definitely the jealousy thing.”

“You’re annoying,” he settles on telling her, snidely, and he swears she does her own version of a preen in response.

She sighs, wistful. “Old me could have milked so many psych papers out of you.”

Abruptly withdrawing her feet to her side of the seat, to no small sigh of relief on his part, Heather reorients to fold herself up cross-legged and pulls out her phone, prompting him to fish for his own to check the time. It’s later than he thought, and a quick glance inside confirms that the party has died down considerably from its earlier dull roar, with most of the house’s remaining occupants seeming to have congregated on the living room floor, sprawled out and sharing around what he presumes to be a bowl of chips.

After a surprisingly companionable silence—during which they both down the rest of their drinks—Heather nudges him with her shoulder. 

“Are you sure you’re not just secretly bummed this ruins your chances of ever getting with me? Because: in your weirdo whitebread dreams, Armie.”

“Aren’t you married?”

“With a hot tub,” she agrees. “You know, statistically speaking,” she adds after a beat, “if we’re looking at patterns in Rebecca’s love life, all signs point to you and Paula.”

He huffs out a laugh. “Okay. Paula wishes.”

Heather widens her eyes. “Dude. You should be so lucky.”

He’s saved from having to consider the scenario in too much detail, though, by the sound of the front door unlatching, inching open incrementally to reveal none other than the hostess herself, having at some point shed her fancy ruched red number for a more relaxed black tracksuit and released her hair from the confines of its braids.

“Hey, you,” Rebecca says, looking right at him, the words weirdly pitched and drawn-out as she rocks on her heels, and all Nathaniel can think as his throat goes dry is that it’s strange to see her exuding shyness now after exhibiting such enormous bravery up on stage.

Heather pulls herself up to her feet, the elbow that connects with his ribcage as she goes definitely deliberate.

He shoots her a panicked look as she peels away from his side.

“Sorry, dude,” she says, shrugging. “What can I say? I’m Switzerland.”

He stands, because it feels like the polite thing to do. Rebecca only hesitates a moment before sliding into the spot Heather has just vacated, drawing her legs up beside her and tucking into the bend in the lounge. She busies herself with constructing a cocoon from the blanket draped over the back before proffering him a corner and, taking the safer route—or perhaps the coward’s way out—Nathaniel drops carefully back down onto the furthest cushion with a breathy chuckle.

She shrugs—an unconcerned, _your loss_ kind of gesture—and lowers the blanket. “Just so you know, the guest of honour at this particular party is me. You’re not allowed to spend the whole night getting high with Heather and avoiding me.”

“I wasn’t—”

She looks up at him through her eyelashes, the rims around her pupils piercingly blue-green and speckled with reflected fairy lights, and the protest wilts into nothing on his tongue. 

“I thought that maybe I made you uncomfortable,” she continues, releasing him from the steel grip of her gaze and instead turning to pluck at the threads in the blanket. “That it was something I said in my speech, or the song.”

He doesn’t know how to tell her that in fact the opposite is true—that hearing her speak and sing was the most at home he’s felt all night; that she’s always made him feel that way. “It’s not you,” is what comes out instead. They both hear the unspoken follow up— _it’s me_. He winces, and takes awhile to consider before he elaborates. “I kind of feel like I don’t really belong here, anymore. Like maybe I never did.”

It’s not like he doesn’t know how to be around people anymore, he realises. It’s _these_ people, so peculiar and insistent in the way they get under his skin. 

This _person_ , singular, that’s never once given him the option to choose otherwise.

“Because you belong back in Guatemala?” she asks, voice small and maybe—if he’d let himself believe it—a little sad.

“Maybe,” he says. Licks his lips. “Probably not. I don’t know.”

“I don’t know what to say, except that I hope that’s not true.”

It still catches him off guard sometimes, the uncanny easiness with which she can so earnestly say what she’s thinking. It’s always gone against his better nature, but she’s done a good job retraining him without either of them realising.

“I think,” he says carefully, “that I can be back here, and still hang upside down. Whether I’m surrounded by monkeys or not.”

It takes her a moment to understand, brows pulling together in that quintessential Rebecca fashion that is encouraging even in her confusion, but then his meaning clicks and the laughter bubbles up out of her, delighted, bright and free.

She leans closer, nose crinkling, like she’s imparting a secret. “The world kind of looks better upside down, don’t you think?”

He thinks about that—about journeys and life lessons and this remarkable woman that’s always sent him tilting, right from that very first day she barrelled in and threw his world off-kilter in a wild burst of colour. 

His ever-expanding angle of inclination. 

“Or maybe this was us just finally realising which way is up.”

“Yeah,” she says, cocking her head and studying him in a way that makes him feel like she’s seeing right through him, into his soul. “Yeah, I can drink to that,” she adds eventually, raising her glass.

He goes to mirror the motion only to remember his empty bottle, but before he can blink Heather has reappeared, pressed a fresh beer into his hand, ruffled his hair and is walking away without a word before he can process enough to protest.

Rebecca lets out a quiet giggle, and it’s like someone’s brought up a spotlight on her, and the beam's firing straight out of his chest.

She shifts until she’s properly at his side, close but not quite tucked against him. After a moment, her head rolls carefully onto his shoulder and she makes a tiny sigh of contentment.

“To new beginnings,” she says with resolve, inclining her beer to knock against his. 

“To new beginnings,” he echoes, and closes his eyes with the slow spread of his smile.


End file.
